Hollywood Faces Grave Threat From Popcorn Time

Right now in Hollywood, the biggest disruptor is
Netflix. With its growing roster of original programs and massive subscriber base, it's the technology that has most executives staying up late at night trying to figure out where the entertainment business is going. But in recent weeks, an even more dangerous technology has popped up: Popcorn Time. [Please be careful when clicking on Popcorn Time related links. We received a note that this one might have malware.]

Popcorn Time is an app that makes film and TV piracy ridiculously easy. I have never watched a pirated movie. That's partially because I think piracy is wrong but I am also too technologically inept to work my way around the world of torrents. But Popcorn Time is so easy even I can use it. The above video shows BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield downloading the app on his computer and quickly queuing up Frozen, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Godfather and Star Wars. The movies all load quickly and stream in what looks like great quality. Although the app can only be used on computers right now, Greenfield (read his whole blog post here) says he had no problem using Airplay to send the stream to his
Apple TV. That's pretty terrifying.

Popcorn Time exploded onto the scene a few weeks ago but it was almost as quickly taken down (by the creators, not the law). In a note to users, the company's founders said they were closing down because "we need to move on with our lives."

But almost as quickly, a new version of Popcorn Time hit the web. Renamed Time4Popcorn.eu, the new version is exactly the same and boasts shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and The Wire on its front page.

To make matters worse for Hollywood, not only is the interface elegant and easy to use but it seems like it will be almost impossible to take it down. The site doesn't host anything. According to a post on Torrent Freak, there's an API for the movie torrents, another for the movie info and another for the poster. It's all automated. And now that it's out there even if Hollywood did manage to kill Popcorn Time, another version would obviously spring right up.

Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch says the irony here is that the piracy community has created the product that Hollywood should have built on its own . Although watching your favorite shows and movies at home whenever you want has gotten easier than ever, it still requires a hodgepodge of subscriptions and technologies. When I want to watch something I search
Netflix, iTunes, On-Demand and Amazon streaming. With more tech companies getting into the original content game, that list of places is going to get even longer. Imagine if you could just go to one source and watch whatever you wanted? That's the (illegal) power of Popcorn Time.

Will Hollywood be able to catch up and create something equally as compelling that still funnels money to the creators of all this great content? It will be hard. A good first step would be closing the windowing system. The fact that movies are in theaters for a certain amount of weeks and then almost disappear until they hit the home video window is ridiculous in this day and age. If Hollywood could find a way to offer movies at home earlier, even at a higher price, they'd create a new revenue source and give people an alternative to piracy.

Of course theater owners would have to agree to that kind of a scheme and that's why Hollywood will really never be able to come up with something as simple and elegant as Popcorn Time. There are too many stakeholders with too many competing interests. If services like Popcorn Time catch on though, Hollywood will have to figure something out or risk killing home video revenues.

I live in Los Angeles and I'm lucky enough to write about the thing I love most: movies. I'm a graduate of Vassar College and Northwestern University and for 15 years I worked at Forbes mostly covering the entertainment industry. Although I've moved into the world of corpora...